Elizabeth Smart, who in 2002 was kidnapped from her parents’ home in Utah and abused by her captors until her rescue nine months later, was in Colorado Springs earlier this month to speak at an event that raised $95,000 for Safe Passage Children’s Advocacy Center.

“It was our biggest fundraiser ever,” reports event publicist Anne Pacitto. “The benefit itself was so real, energetic and passionate. (Elizabeth’s) speech was so inspirational, so completely raw, we were all left in awe.”

Among other things, Smart declared that she no longer considers herself a victim — something she attributes to advice given by her mother.

Smart said that her mother helped her to move on from the trauma by telling her she shouldn’t give her captors any more of her time; that she should be happy and follow her own dreams instead of dwelling in the past. Today, the 24-year-old Smart is a contributor to ABC-TV’s “Good Morning America” and in February married Matthew Gilmour in Hawaii.

Safe Passage Child Advocacy Center serves abused children throughout southern Colorado. The Elizabeth Smart Foundation was formed to help young people recover from child abuse and related traumas.